Journal of European Baptist Studies, Volume 9, Number 2, January 2009

rovide an easily grasped example of a dynamical system. Since Campbell’s original paper focused on ants it is appropriate to follow in his footsteps. I will show the applicability of dynamical systems theory to the behaviour of an ant colony. Harvester ant colonies consist of a queen surrounded by interior workers deep inside the burrow, and other worker ants that only enter chambers near the surface. The worker ants are specialised: some forage for 13 Ibid., p. 146. 12 Journal of European Baptist Studies food, others carry away trash, and still others carry dead ants away from the colony. Deborah Gordon has shown that the ants manage to locate the trash pile and the cemetery at points that maximise the distances between cemetery and trash pile, and between both of these and the colony itself. 14 Ant colonies show other sorts of ‘intelligent’ behaviour. If the colony is disturbed, workers near the queen will carry her down an escape hatch. ‘A harvester ant colony in the field will not only ascertain the shortest distance to a food source, it will also prioritize food sources, based on their distance and ease of access. In response to changing external conditions, worker ants switch from nest-building to foraging, to raising ant pupae.’ 15 Colonies develop over time. Successful colonies last up to fifteen years, the lifespan of the queen, even though worker ants live only a year. The colonies themselves go through stages: young colonies are more fickle than older ones. Gordon says: ‘If I do the same experiment week after week with older colonies, I get the same results: they respond the same way over and over. If we do the same experiment week after week with a younger colony, they’ll respond one way this week, and another way next week, so the younger colonies are more sensitive to whatever’s different about this week than last week.’ Younger colonies are also more aggressive. ‘If older colonies meet a neighbor one day, the next day they’re more likely to turn and go in the other direction to avoid each other. The younger colonies are much more persistent and aggressive, even though they’re smaller.’ 16 While these shifts in the colonies’ ‘attitudes’ over time have yet to be explained, the coordination of the functions of the worker ants, such as changing from foraging to nest-building, has been. Ants secrete pheromones that serve as chemical signals to other ants. E. O. Wilson has shown that fire ants have a vocabulary of ten signals, nine based on pheromones, that code for task recognition. Gradients in pheromone trails make it possible to indicate directionality. Gordon’s explanation for the colony’s ability to adjust task allocation according to colony size and food supply depends on the ants’ ability to keep track of the frequency of encounters with other ants of various types. So, for example, ‘[a] foraging ant might expect to meet three other foragers per minute - if she encounters more